author

Menu

Reviews

Praise for In the Slender Margin

“To Joseph, it makes as much sense for the dead to appear as spirits glowing in midair as for them to be inert and terminated.” —The New York Times (read the entire review)

“Poet and essayist Joseph (The Startled Heart) serves up luminous, poetic prose in this thoughtful look at dying, grief, burial, and how animals react to loss, among many related topics.” —The Publishers Weekly (read the entire review)

The Globe Books 100: Best Canadian non-fiction 2014“In the Slender Margin is intended as an exploration rather than a balm or solace, though it will no doubt be those things for some people. Its resonance comes, rather, from its intelligent open-endedness, its unflinching, simultaneous embrace of death’s reality and persistent mystery.” —Globe and Mail (read the entire review)

“The wonder of personal essays is their meandering nature. The author has questions, may find some answers, but mostly she writes to find out what she is thinking. That’s the case with Joseph’s exceptional book. . . .” —The Vancouver Sun(read the entire review)

“Blending elements of memoir, reporting, and bookish contemplation, In the Slender Margin is an intricate and beautiful essay on approaching that good night we all go into, gently or otherwise.” —National Post (read the entire review)

Interviews with Eve Joseph about In the Slender Margin

“[T]his is an extended and compelling meditation on death: she’s filigreed the memoir with dozens of short anecdotes, quotations, bits of life experience and trivia that record a life of quietly observing death.” Maurice Mierau interviews Eve Joseph for The Winnipeg Review (read the entire interview).

“Eve Joseph’s new book, In the Slender Margin: The IntimateStrangeness of Death and Dying, is essential reading for everyone.” Lynne Van Luven interviews Eve Joseph for the Coastal Spectator(read the entire interview).

Bill Stenson interviews Eve Joseph for Canadian Memoirs (listen here). You can also find it on iTunes.

Praise for previous works

“Joseph extends the usual limits of the lyric, allowing the reader to imaginatively enter into the point of view of the subjects of her poems—crow, carp, swallow—whose voices she assumes.” —Globe and Mail

“[Joseph] illuminates one of the great mysteries of the human condition with a supple and often incandescent array of imagery, insight, allusion, even humour—and a daring lack of sentimentality. It’s a work of poetic prose that can rest comfortably alongside the classic writers of the genre, from Michel de Montaigne to Annie Dillard.” —The Judges at The Malahat Review

“I was haunted by the gentling towards innerness and by the way the poem slowly opens up to the world at large. ‘White Camellias’ is a geography of the moment before the moment passes.” —Barry Dempster

“The Startled Heart is a memorable collection that tugs on death’s sleeve, sometimes with the innocence of a child, sometimes with the ache of the unforgiving.” —Georgia Straight

“A spirited attempt to discern the unknowable, a brave sally into a dark thicket of our shared experience, and a careful sifting of the author’s travels through the land of the dying” —The Judges at The Malahat Review